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r they are not the works of their seemingly extinct progenitors?--of that people of the same race, (but more directly allied to the Toltecans of Mexico,) who appear in former times to have constituted populous and cultivated communities throughout the valley of the Mississippi, and in the southern and western regions towards the gulf of Mexico, and whose last direct and lineal representatives were the ill-fated Natchez? I have made much inquiry as to the localities of these and analogous remains, but hitherto with little success. I am assured that they have been found in Missouri, perhaps near St. Louis; and in very rare instances in the northern part of Delaware. Dr. Ruggles has sent me the plaster model of a small, perforated, but irregularly formed stone of this kind, taken from an ancient Indian grave at Fall River in Rhode Island; but Dr. Edwin H. Davis, of Chilicothe, in a letter recently received from him, informs me that he had obtained, during his excavations in that vicinity, no less than "two hundred flint disks in a single mound, measuring from three and a half to five inches in diameter, and from half an inch to an inch in thickness, of three different forms, round, oval and triangular." These appear, however, to be of a different construction and designed for some other use than those I have described; and Dr. Davis himself offers the probable suggestion, that "they were rude darts blocked out at the quarries for easy transportation to the Indian towns." The same gentleman speaks of having found other disks formed of a micaceous slate, of a dark color and highly polished. These last appear to correspond more nearly to those we have indicated in the above diagrams. Besides these disks, I have met with a few spheroidal stones, about three inches in diameter. One of these accompanies the disks from South Carolina, and is marked with a groove to receive the thumb in throwing it. A similar but ruder ball is contained among the articles found by Mr. Atwater in the mound near Huron, Ohio. What was the use of the disks in question? Those who have examined the series in my possession have offered various explanations; but the only one that seems in any degree plausible, is that of my friend Dr. Blanding, who supposes them to have been used in a game analogous to that of the quoits of the Europeans. It is a curious fact that discoidal stones much resembling these have been found in Scandinavia;[17-*] whence I
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